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Federal and state conservation agencies would not be aware that the northernmost coastal populations of a high profile endangered species, the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, and also one of the largest remaining populations, occurs in Santa Barbara County if UCSB did not have expert ornithologists on its staff associated with a museum. |
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Steve Rothstein
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The Ornithological Research Collection contains about 8000 specimens, mostly from southern California but with many from other parts of the USA and elsewhere in the world. Most of the specimens were collected by Professors Mary Erickson and Barbara DeWolfe before 1970. When the current Faculty Curator of Ornithology, Professor Stephen Rothstein, arrived at UCSB in 1972 he gave high priority to the maintenance and use of the bird collections. Over time, Professor Rothstein and Vertebrate Collections Manager Mark Holmgren, who joined the staff in 1983 and is now CCBER Associate Director, added small numbers of new specimens to fill in teaching and research needs.
Collections manager Holmgren and Professor Rothstein have used some of the knowledge generated by their activities to collaborate on studies of the avifauna of nearby Vandenberg
Air Force Base (VAFB).
They found that VAFB is an unrecognized riparian treasure as it contains some of the
richest riparian avifaunas left in all of California.
Southwestern riparian environments have special significance as roughly 90% of them have been destroyed or seriously degraded by human activities, yet these habitats once had the highest biodiversity in North America. Of special significance at VAFB was the discovery that local Willow Flycatchers are members
of the federally endangered Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus). This gives the local flycatchers
and their riparian habitat an extraordinary level of protection.
It is interesting to note that specimens are not the only
valuable resource that makes up a properly functioning museum. Museums employ people with unusually deep knowledge bases. Federal and state conservation agencies
would not be aware that the northernmost coastal populations of a high profile endangered species, the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, and also one of the largest remaining populations, occurs in Santa Barbara County if UCSB did not have expert ornithologists on its staff associated with a museum. |
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Adult Southwestern Willow Flycatcher. Courtesy of Michael J. Hopiak,
Cornell Lab of Ornithology. |
But it is of course the specimens that represent the core value of a museum. A question that often arises about specimens is why there is often emphasis on inclusion of many examples of the same species. In other words, wouldn’t one of each suffice? But specimen collections are repositories and generators of ecological and evolutionary knowledge, and variation among individuals is one of the most important issues in biology. Indeed, there would be no evolution without variation among individuals, and the only way we can assess variation is by studying many individuals. This reliance on a series of individuals is amply demonstrated by research on social and dominance behavior in White-crowned Sparrows that Professor Rothstein and his students began in the 1980s. The research focused on the “status signaling enigma,” namely, the fact that many animals have badges of status that signal their dominance level, such as large antlers in male deer. This status signaling allows dominant individuals to acquire resources at the expense of subordinate individuals without having to engage in fighting. |
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